


Point of View

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Past Child Abuse, but he feels bad about it, people we like doing bad things, written immediately post 1.10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:47:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6664666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone looks at things a different way. The conversation between Sara and Mick in Legends of Tomorrow Progeny (1.10) takes a left turn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Point of View

“You know, while you were selling us out to a homicidal time pirate, Leonard and I almost died,” Sara says. Mick instinctively leans forward before logic catches up and he pulls himself back. Worrying about Snart’s not his job any more. “He was thinking about you. Told me about your partnership, your friendship.”

Mick’s eyes narrow. “Did it make you weepy?” he sneers. He wanted to dismiss her out of hand, but he couldn’t help that little twist of curiosity. Not where Snart was concerned. His lips twist upwards. “Say, what bullshit story did he feed you?”

She pauses, clearly not expecting him to engage further. Then she shrugs a little, smiles. “His first day in juvie.”

Mick flinches automatically, unable to stop himself and hating himself for it even as it happened. An unknown number of years with the Time Masters later and still the same reaction. Len had to have shared _that_ story. Of course he did. 

Sara catches it, of course, immediately straightening up and looking interested. “You don’t like that story?” she asks, tilting her head back a little. Made her look like a bird. He wasn’t going to give her any more than that, though. “Why? Because you come off as a hero?”

“A _hero_?” Mick exclaims involuntarily. “Worst goddamn day of my life, more like it.”

He hadn’t meant to say that.

Sara frowns. “He said you saved him from a group of kids,” she says slowly. “One of them had a knife, and you saved him. _That’s_ the worst day of your life?”

Mick shrugs. He had a couple of others that he’d put up against it – he had a _lot_ of days that qualified for “worst” – but yeah, it was pretty bad. He hadn’t thought it was at the time; it hadn’t seemed particularly notable. 

In retrospect, he knew better. You don’t always see the turning points when they’re happening, but that’s one of his, and not one of his better ones. 

He doesn’t remember when he realized what had happened that day, doesn’t think there was any one lightbulb moment, just that one day he _knew_. Spent years afterwards hating himself for it. Trying not to be that guy.

Well, not counting the whole training-by-the-Time-Masters thing, which he still can’t properly quantify. 

Sara’s thinking about it and he can actually see her going down the wrong path. The way people always do. 

“Is it because that’s when you met him?” she says softly. Injured tone of voice: she wants them to make up, and that doesn’t work if he thinks meeting Len’s the worst thing that ever happened to him. He could strike now; eradicate all hope of any sort of “reform” for him, and for her. His training whispers instructions to him. You don’t need a gun or a knife to eviscerate a person.

He can’t do it. Not with _that_.

“It’s not about–” _Lenny._ “–Snart at all,” he says. “It’s about me. The sort of person I am.”

“You rescued him,” she points out. “You–”

“The fact that you’re dumb enough to listen to Snart about anything doesn’t mean it’s true,” Mick interrupts. “Haven’t you learned by now that you can’t just _trust_ what he says?”

Sara scowls. “He’s not a liar.”

God, sometimes he can’t deal with these people.

“Snart’s no liar,” he agrees. “Doesn’t mean you can’t trust him. It isn’t his fault, neither; his brain doesn’t recall things the right way. His dad used to kick his ass when he was a kid. That fucks your head up, sometimes.”

She doesn’t get it, he sees that. Suddenly he needs her to know; needs her to understand the fundamental problems at Len’s core being, the things you need to know to really get everything about the man.

“Len doesn’t always remember the bad things that happen so long as there’s good stuff there too,” Mick says. “Stuff that’s all bad, sure, he’s got plenty of that. But stuff that’s in the middle, if he wants the memory to be good, he’ll just leave out the bad stuff. Not that he forgets it,” he hastily amends. “It isn’t amnesia or anything. He’s just so good at ignoring the bad stuff it’s as if it didn’t happen. Take the story he told you. What’d he say?”

“Just what I told you,” she says, confused. “It was his first day in juvie, he was the smallest kid there, he got jumped by a group of kids. One had a knife. You saved him.”

“And that’s the end of it, right?” he said, lips twisted into a mockery of a smile. “Story’s over.”

“What did he leave out?”

“Me, mostly,” Mick says, still disgusted with his thoughtless younger self to this day. Hey, they were in a time ship – how come he’d never thought to go knock some sense into his piece of shit younger self? “Tell me, how many reasons does an eighteen year old punk in juvie have for saving some kid from what he’s got coming?”

“I don’t understand.”

Mick arches an eyebrow at her. “You’ve never been in prison,” he says. “Juvie’s a lot like that, just younger. Same rules apply. You put yourself on the line to protect someone, you own them. Gotta get something back on your investment, if you know what I mean.” He leers at her, running his eyes over her hot little body as if he cared about that sort of thing right now. 

Unsurprisingly, she looked disgusted, then taken aback when she digested his implication. “So, what, you slept with him? What’s the big deal about that? From what I recall from when we started this trip, it’s been something like thirty years and you two were still doing plenty of that.”

“He was _fourteen_ ,” Mick says tightly. “And from Central, home of the country’s worst inner city public school systems. He barely even knew how kids got made.”

The memories flash through the forefront of his mind like they always do. Len’d been pretty badly done up by the kids before Mick had intervened; nothing that required stitches or anything, but his skin was a patchwork quilt of nasty bruising and at least one muscle sprain. They’d gone to the infirmary and Len’d lifted some pills when Mick distracted the pretty nurse, dry-swallowing too many of them in an effort to hide the evidence. By the time Mick had led him back to his bunk, the kid’d been higher than a jet plane. 

That was probably why Len hadn’t fought him that time, just stared at him with big wide unresisting eyes until Mick had shoved his face into the pillow to get him to stop. And after that he’d just followed Mick around for a couple of weeks like a fucking puppy, nice and obedient to whatever he’d wanted like Len never is. 

Mick had liked that period of their relationship right up until he met Len’s dad.

Of course, after the first two weeks or so, whatever stupid knock that had bumped the sense right out of Lenny’s head had gone away, and the mouthy little brat he’d been when he’d somehow managed to get jumped on his first day by two different groups of kids reared its head again. By then, Mick wasn’t exactly predisposed to take any of his bullshit and had already gotten the full measure of how much (or how little) Len knew how to fight, so when Len had finally started trying to struggle, it didn’t do him a lick of good. 

Oh, yeah, Mick remembered juvie. He remembered it as the time that he was the worst version of himself. Even Kronos had his limits.

Lenny had forgiven him for it, of course. Lenny always forgave the people he loved everything. It was one of his least attractive traits.

It had taken Lenny forty years to find the point at which he couldn’t make excuses for his dad any more. Maybe it wasn’t all that surprising that it had only taken a few months longer for him to find the point where he couldn’t do it for Mick, either.

“He’s your friend,” Sara’s voice broke into his reverie, clearly opting to go back to her original plan. Maybe she’d said something when he was lost in thought; maybe she’d just shrugged it off like they all did. “A loyal one. You should know that.”

“Well, thank you,” he replies, sneering and settling back against the bench. “I’ll work it out with him soon as I can.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because sometimes I write idfic. 
> 
> Nearly forgot to move this one when I shifted all my fics from tumblr.


End file.
